


While I'm Away

by Joana789



Category: The Princess Diaries - All Media Types
Genre: And Then Isn't Anymore, Canon Compliant, F/M, Happens During Book 9 and 10, Michael is in Japan, POV Michael, Snowflake Necklace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2016-11-02
Packaged: 2018-08-28 16:02:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8452741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joana789/pseuds/Joana789
Summary: He remembers all those flippant conversations they had back in the day, back when he called her ”Thermopolis” and laughed at all those little rankings she liked to make so much and then wrote songs about her in his room and always, always paid attention to her, even though she had no idea.And Michael thinks about the necklace hidden at the bottom of his desk drawer, about the reason he wasn’t able to leave it in New York.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I know this fandom is practically dead but whoever reads this, I hope you'll enjoy. Those two morons will be the death of me one day, I've been wanting to write something about them since forever.

 

Before he realizes, Mia is gone, and that’s it.

This is what she does, Michael knows; he’s known this girl ever since she became his little sister’s best friend when she was six and he was nine, and he’s been in love with her nearly equally as long and he knows that Mia Thermopolis is good at running away. It’s an easy thing for her, even though she’s not a coward in the slightest, but still — she flees and hides and leaves, just like that. She left him in front of the whole school back when he confessed to her, and run away.

And now, too.

Michael feels like screaming, for a split second, because he’s still so freaking angry — at himself, and at Mia, and at this whole stupid situation because this is not how he expected this night to end at all and for God’s sake, he’s not sure if he really understands what this whole argument was even about — but he doesn’t make a sound. He’s alone in the room, and there’s no-one to yell at anymore but himself, just like there’s nothing left to fight for.

When the anger passes, he feels kind of numb.

He looks at the snowflake necklace, a glimpse of silver on the floor where Mia let it drop and wonders if he should just leave it there, but then decides not to, no.

Maybe it’s a stupid thing to admit, but he always took some pride, silently, in the fact that Mia seemed to like this little thing so much. Ever since he gave it to her, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen her not wearing it. Mia even had this little habit Michael doesn’t really think she was aware of — whenever he managed to make her particularly happy or said something especially funny, she always involuntarily touched it, this little piece of metal, a quick movement, her fingers curling around it briefly.

Michael always took some pride it that, too.

So he crouches and picks it up from the carpet and then hides it in the pocket of his jeans.

And then he leaves the hotel room, catches a cab — the driver eyes him weirdly when he enters and Michael wonders what kind of expression he must be wearing, only briefly, though, because it’s not like he really cares.

  
—————

  
He gets home, and the first person he sees is Lilly, and Michael couldn’t care less when she shoots him a suspicious look instead of simply saying _hello_. His mind is racing and isn’t at the same time; it’s an odd feeling, one he’s not used to, because there are so many thoughts in his head — _What time is it?_ and _I should call Mrs. Thermopolis_ and _How the fuck did all this even happen?_ — and he doesn’t really know what to do about any of them.

”Hey, what’s up with you?” Lilly says, and Michael realizes that she must have called his name a couple of times, which he apparently missed. He watches her frown deepen as she eyes him and then asks, ”Why are you back home so early?”

He swallows and, for some unknown reason, it takes him a second too long to form a proper response.

”We broke up,” Michael says; his voice sounds a little weird, even to his own ears.

Lilly is silent, suddenly, and it’s enough of an indication just how much this information shocks her because she’s never silent, not Lilly Moscovitz.

”What?” she says, in a voice much too quiet than usual and Michael can practically taste the words on his tongue, just how bitter they are.

”Mia and I, we—” he starts and doesn’t finish because now his voice doesn’t sound normal at all, for sure, and he cuts himself off in the middle of the sentence, swallows and just shakes his head, then goes to his room. He does’t want to deal with Lilly now, and all her questions and whatever she’d want to say.

The necklace in his pocket seems to weigh a ton.

  
—————

  
His apartment in Tsukuba is tiny and empty, and at first, he has to force himself to go back to it after work, wondering if it’ll ever start to feel more like home.

It is kind of a heady feeling, though, Michael admits, being in charge of such a big project, now when it starts to actually work out and feel real. It takes some getting used to because he’s still only nineteen and doesn’t really know what he’s doing half the time, and everyone around him speaks a language he doesn’t know at all and the food is different and he really misses New York, but being here is a huge chance for him, he reminds himself, and he’s going to make the best of it.

At this point, it doesn’t really matter that he feels he’d rather be watching Star Wars curled up on the couch or listening to what the Dowager Princess came up with this time or doing some extra Algebra.

  
—————

  
Michael sends Mia an email first — because wasn’t it his idea to settle on being just friends? — and he does his best for it to seem casual and friendly but doesn’t really think he succeeds much; Mia’s always been better with words than him, anyway.

He remembers all those flippant conversations they had back in the day, back when he called her ” _Thermopolis_ ” and laughed at all those little rankings she liked to make so much and then wrote songs about her in his room and always, always paid attention to her, even though she had no idea.

He waits for her to respond and tells himself it’ll all work out somehow, right, because it always somehow worked out between them. They just need a break; maybe that’ll be actually good for them — that’s what he told her, after all, when he called.

Mia doesn't write back.

He writes another email after a while, this time a little bit more desperate one, but she doesn’t respond to this one either, and Michael thinks, _Fuck_.

  
—————

  
Boris tells him, ”They’re seriously in love, Michael.” And then he adds, because it’s Boris, and that’s what he does, ”I think.”

And it’s not like he hasn’t known that already, because Japan might be five thousand miles away from New York but the internet works equally well in both places and Michael’s seen all the pictures taken of those two and even read a couple of articles — the press really adored J. P. in all of them, if only because he and Mia looked so good together, ” _both so tall and fair-haired and sophisticated_ ” and Michael couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the ”sophisticated” part back then, not when he still remembered sliding in his socks down the halls of the Summer Palace in Genovia with the very same girl.

And it’s not like he ever cared about what the media had to say — all he really cared about was being with Mia, and it was more than enough for the both of them — but sometimes, he catches himself thinking that maybe it actually does make some sense.

He gave Mia a stupid little necklace for her birthday, after all, a silver one because he’s always been an ordinary guy and couldn’t afford anything more; she gave him freaking moon rocks, real ones — how do those two things even compare?

Michael knows Mia doesn’t care about those things, she never has, that he’s always been enough for her, that for some strange, twisted reason she thought she was the one who didn’t deserve him and not the other way around.

He thinks about the necklace hidden at the bottom of his desk drawer, about the reason he wasn’t able to leave it in New York.

He tells Boris, ”I know.”

  
—————

 

Michael doesn’t really read a lot about her on the internet — it’s dumb, in his opinion, especially since the real Mia never really shows in all those interviews and articles anyway; the media always try to shape her up into someone else, some stranger they prefer over the real her, into someone she’s not.

(”They never even ask me about the important things,” she told him once, so long ago that it feels like a different life altogether now, back when she was fourteen and he was seventeen and this whole madness of her being a princess was just staring out.

”Important stuff like what, Thermopolis?” Michael teased, and she didn’t even bother rolling her eyes like she usually would, too engrossed in her thoughts.

”Like the environment! Global warming! The fact that we’re all going to drown when the glaciers melt completely, which, you know, is going to happen soon.” She looked like she was going to say something else, but then just frowned. ”All they want to talk about are dresses and designers and the love life I don’t have.”

Michael tried to ignore that last part.)

So no, he doesn’t google her name on a daily basis.

It’s hard to miss, though, news like that, when she pulls a letter out from nowhere and just like that ignites a spark that turns her whole country from monarchy to democracy within a span of seconds and that’s — that’s _big_.

He looks at the photos of her, brave and beautiful, on the screen of his computer and wonders how come their worlds are so, so different now, even more than they used to. It doesn’t feel wrong, to think that, though.

Michael’s so _damn_ _proud_ of her.

  
—————

  
Maybe it’s a little stupid, but when she finally writes him back, he grins like an idiot for a couple of minutes straight.

  
—————

  
Tsukuba starts to feel more and more like home after a while, and he starts to get a hang of Japanese, and he barely has time to eat and sleep when he doesn’t work, but from time to time Michael actually dares to think, somewhere in the back of his head, ” _It’s_ _good_.”

Not great, but good.

He’s busy. It’s pretty difficult to feel lonely when there’s always something he has to do or take care of, and it’s difficult to feel lonely in a city that huge and among so many people. His colleagues are clever and funny and they sometimes take him out, make him sing karaoke or eat things he’s never heard about before and he does not think about Mia Thermopolis in those moments.

Weeks pass, slowly but steadily, and then months, and so it goes.

Their back and forth is scant and a little too bland for his liking, barely a small part of what he and Mia used to have, but Michael does not complain, because he’ll take whatever she’s willing to give him. It’s not much, but it is _something_ and he’s glad she writes him back at all, even if she ignores his questions from time to time or if it takes her two weeks to respond.

She’s busy, too, Michael knows.

She causes a small scandal, once, then gets it under control within days, only to eventually turn the whole situation into a positive thing, somehow. She and Lana Weinberger become friends — that’s hard to believe, but Boris swears it’s the truth. Mia gives interviews and handles the press with grace and experience, attends events, speaks her mind in public, stands proud and _royal_ , but still as a girl he fell in love with all those year ago and Michael watches her grow, through all those little bits and pieces of information that he sometimes comes across.

It’s a shame, he thinks from time to time — not often, but still — that he can’t witness all those changes himself.

In those moments, he misses Mia more than he’d like to admit.

  
—————

  
He gets the necklace out of the drawer only once, really.

It’s on Mia’s birthday. It’s already late at night when he fishes it out, a cool piece of metal he hasn’t seen in a long time, and Michael has been trying to ignore the date today, but now he’s just tired and dejected and maybe simply miserable, a little bit, because when he sits down on his bed, after this long, long day of trying not to think and failing constantly, he suddenly feels very small.

It’s a pretty thing — the necklace, he means. Not the prettiest piece of jewelry Mia’s every seen or worn for sure, but pretty enough, Michael thinks. It glints a little in his palm, in the dark of the room, and Michael can barely make out its shape or its details, but that doesn’t really matter.

He looks at it and thinks of cold on his cheeks and snow in his hair and warmth on his lips and heat in his chest and how difficult it was to stop smiling and how weirdly soft his own voice sounded that night when he was trying to say goodbye to Mia in front of her house and how he didn’t mind in the slightest.

”Happy birthday, Mia,” Michael mutters into the emptiness of his tiny apartment because it’s the first time in his life when he can’t say the words to her face to face but needs to say them out loud anyway.

He hides the necklace and goes to sleep and his dreams are full of snow and warmth.

  
—————

  
Michael flies back to New York a couple of times. For Christmas, once, and for his birthday, for his parents’ 25th anniversary, big things like that.

He doesn’t tell Mia about any of those visits, because it’s better like this, when she doesn’t know, and he doesn’t really have any reason to tell her anyway, does he?

  
—————

  
His life in Japan is different from what his life in New York used to be.

It’s a slow blur, days mixed together, a mess of work, his cluttered apartment, crappy, half-cold take-out food and coffee that’s never strong enough, lack of sleep and bills he needs to pay.

There’s a couple of girls, too — the cute one from the local convenience store down the street, the one that lives in the apartment right next to his, the one he meets at some club on a night he doesn’t really remember much from, the red-haired one who scribbles her phone number on the back of her business card and Michael never calls.

And maybe he should try dating, but he doesn’t really want to.

Lilly calls him, sometimes, and his mom, too, and he tells them about the progress he’s made so far and all the things that still need to be taken care of and about his colleagues, about how his Japanese gets a little better every day, and then asks Lilly about school, asks his mom about Pavlov and about New York in general and they talk and talk until it almost feels as if Michael never really left in the first place.

And so it goes.

 

—————

  
Until, one day, he’s suddenly, _finally_ done.

  
—————

  
When Michael Moscovitz comes back to New York, the media call him a genius and a prodigy and a new hope of the medical world and he watches the statistics rise and charts change and before he knows it, his name is all over the internet and in the newspapers and it’s a little overwhelming, to be honest.

”You’re not giving yourself enough credit,” Midori tells him, smiling, when he jokes that hey, he’s still just an ordinary guy, what’s up with all the attention, and he understands what she means — that he’s just 21 and already one of the wealthiest people on Manhattan, young and successful and promising — but at the same time, Michael doesn’t think that she understands what he means, not really.

And the thing is — he might be a genius or a prodigy or whatever, call him what you will, but now, when he’s finally back, he feels eighteen all over again, a boy who likes to watch silly programs on TV and sing petty songs with his band and mess around with his girlfriend.

For a second, Michael wonders what the Dowager Princess thinks about him _now_.

  
—————

  
He buys an apartment in SoHo, and it’s huge, with an amazing view and a lot of space. The idea that he can actually afford it now is still a little crazy.

He unpacks and the snowflake necklace is still where he hid it, at the bottom of his suitcase, and Michael holds it carefully between his fingers, lets it dangle from his fingers, thinking about how it traveled with him, from New York to Japan and back, and how he kept it, two years ago and this whole time.

He keeps it now, too, just in case.

 

—————

 

It’s not like he’s hoping to give it back to Mia one day. It’s not like that.

Michael keeps it because it means something, simply.

  
—————

  
And he thought they were done, Mia and him, but she blushes when she sees him, and stutters like she used to and Michael smiles at her brightly, daring to think that maybe they are not done after all, not completely.

  
—————

  
(He does give it back to her, though, later, because he just can’t resist the urge.

”I think I have something of yours, Thermopolis,” he says, and it’s meant to sound flippant but there’s something else in the words, too, something softer, something Michael can’t really fight anymore, especially now, when he finally doesn’t have to.

Mia’s eyes glint at the sound of his words and then widen at the sight of what he fishes out of one of the drawers.

”I can buy you a diamond one, if you want,” he tells her, mainly just to mess with her, but also because he really can do that now and isn’t that crazy?

But Mia only interrupts him, saying, ”Are you _insane_?” and kisses him, pulling him down.

Michael smiles into it and they both forget about the necklace for a little while when he kisses her back.)

**Author's Note:**

> If you ever feel like you want to yell with me about anything, here is [my tumblr](http://angstandcats.tumblr.com)


End file.
